K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

In the end, alpine was just easier

I tried, I really tried. I wanted to be one of the cool guys, but mutt didn’t love me. My e-mail would send, but it wouldn’t sort properly and just sat in /var/spool/mail staring at me blankly. Maybe it was procmail. Maybe it was fetchmail. Maybe it was just mutt, and bad karma.

But for as much time as it took me to almost get my four-plus e-mail accounts working with mutt, it took me all of 30 seconds with alpine. Now I can peacefully graze away on the Elysian fields of console-based e-mail clients, without pulling out my hair over the quadruple threat of muttrc-fetchmailrc-procmailrc-msmtprc.

Because honestly, this was all it needed for me to read from an account.

Install alpine. That’s the part that took the longest, if you can believe that.

Start it, and go to the configurations page with M-S-C. Page down until you see “Enable Incoming Folders Collection.” Press return to select it, then E to exit and Q to quit.

Restart alpine.

Press L for the folder list. Highlight “Incoming-Folders” and press return. Press A for a new folder.

When asked for the name of the server to contain the added folder, enter this for a GMail account.

imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=ACCOUNT_NAME@gmail.com

At the “Folder on ‘imap.gmail.com/ssl/use…’ to add:” prompt, enter “Inbox”.

For the “Nickname for folder ‘Inbox':”, enter whatever you want to call the folder locally. I called mine ACCOUNT_NAME@gmail.com

When you press return you’ll be prompted for your password, or given an warning screen about certificates and asked for permission to continue. Enter yes, or your password or both, as needed.